Narrative

Storymentary

I was sitting on the plane back from Australia a little while back and in searching through the in-flight entertainment, a documentary caught my eye: Roger Federer, with the tagline, "Follow the Great Swiss champion from racket-throwing tennis brat to the perfectly composed world number one". With excitement, I hoped this documentary would uncover some of the reasons why Federer shifted in his temperament so significantly. Sadly, it was just another documentary - retracing the history of his winnings, with nice interviews [...]

By Aiden Choles|October 29th, 2008|Categories: Narrative|Tags: documentary, Narrative, roger federer, storymentary|0 Comments

Butch and Sundance

In a recent Time magazine,Robert Redford reflects on his friendship with the late Paul Newman. He describes how they worked together and became friends in the tough movie industry. The pieceends with the following story, which I think perfectly illustrates how a story can convey so much more than facts. It gives us insight into the friendship and even the character of the two men, probably aspects that they would not be able to articulate when asked directly. "We played lots of pranks on [...]

By Aiden Choles|October 13th, 2008|Categories: Narrative|Tags: Narrative, Story, values|0 Comments

Stories more compelling than facts

A futurist named Marvin J. Cetron who apparently predicted 9/11 has just released the outcomes of a study that Cetron’s Forecasting International carried out for the Pentagon. This report outlnes several possible prime US terrorism targets and it makes for interesting reading. The report outlines 10 potential scenarios. What makes them really compeling (and chilling) is the narrative form in which they are written. It proves what we have always advocated: using story or narrative is much more compelling and convincing than using [...]

By Aiden Choles|September 28th, 2008|Categories: Communication, Narrative|Tags: Communication, Narrative, story terror|0 Comments

Stories, sport and performance

I came across a great little anecdote while doing some research for a sports related project Sonja and I are working on - it will hopefully translate into a television series next year, but more of that once we're actually allowed to talk about it :) Here's the anecdote: At the 150th birthday celebration of Grey College,Ryk Neethling gave an address in which he attributed his Olympic success to his education and upbringing at Grey. He recounted an experience he had with [...]

By Aiden Choles|September 25th, 2008|Categories: Narrative|Tags: grey college, harness, Narrative, performance, ryk neethling, sport stories|0 Comments

Sacred stories

We are in the process of planning a couple of exciting projects, one in the world of sport and another in schools. Both of these involve the capturing of stories to assess culture or to "find the magic" in these environments. During a planning discussion with Dave Snowden this morning, he mentioned the concept of "Sacred Stories", those stories that define the way that people or societies see the world. This is an intriguing thought. It got me thinking - what are [...]

By Aiden Choles|September 15th, 2008|Categories: Culture|Tags: Culture, Narrative, Story|0 Comments

Business Science killed the Narrative Star

There's a constant challenge we face when working with narrative material in business - that at some deep level, employees feel a resistance to telling anecdotes and stories in the organisational setting. Sometimes the resistance is direct, "We don't get paid to tell stories!". Somewhere in our history as people who have sold our souls to business, we have lost track of our natural ability to a) tell a story, and b) recognise when we are in fact relating a [...]

By Aiden Choles|February 20th, 2008|Categories: Communication, Culture|Tags: business, business science, Communication, Narrative, oral tradition stories|0 Comments

Culture in Stories

I heard today of a large South African corporate that underwent a transformation. At a certain point in its history a new top-dog was appointed, and he decided, as the top-dogs are wont to do, to bark and bite most of the existing senior leaders out. This "old guard", also being well known in the organization as great tellers of stories (and in some cases, tall ones, but not the matter), duly left, tails between their legs. Not long after, [...]

By Aiden Choles|February 11th, 2008|Categories: Culture, Narrative|Tags: Culture, Narrative, stories|0 Comments

Humility & ignorance in the Leaders journey

Sonja handed me a book the other day with these words, "This is the best fantasy novel ever written!" Being a avid reader and an ever-increasing fan of the genre I obliged and took the book. Raymond E. Feist's Magician is the afore-mentioned novel. Barely a few chapters into the book I am struck by a thread in the Hero's Journey narrative plot that is still fresh in my mind after reading Philip Pullman's Northern Lights recently. In both stories the central character [...]

By Aiden Choles|January 28th, 2008|Categories: Leadership & Decision Making|Tags: fantasy, leadership, magician, Narrative|0 Comments

People leave leaders

"I have yet to find the man, however exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than under a spirit of criticism." ~ Charles M. Schwab We often conduct narrative based culture audits in organisations, and more often than not, one of the key patterns we find is negativity around leaders who don't acknowledge the effort of their employees. In South Africa, where skills shortages and high staff turnover create headaches [...]

By Aiden Choles|December 5th, 2007|Categories: Culture|Tags: Culture, leadership, Narrative, retention, staff turnover, talent|0 Comments

The narrative debate

I came across the following in one of Dave Snowden's articles that I haven't read for a while .. (it's quite long, so please bear with me!) "When people first become aware of the importance of narrative in organisational sense making, the often go through a stage when they think the best thing would be to tell stories in order to control the organisation or some issue. This belief is a swamp across which consultants must guide clients safely, because [...]

By Aiden Choles|December 4th, 2007|Categories: Narrative|Tags: Complexity, Narrative, storytelling|0 Comments

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